Medieval Romance

From its appearance in the late twelfth century through the end of the Middle Ages, romance was the dominant long narrative genre in western vernaculars. As such, it was an important imaginative space for developing and reconsidering ideologies of identity, justice, conquest, sexuality, faith, history, and more. This course will only begin to introduce the genre’s capacious reach. We will place English romances in the Angllo-Norman and continental French context, and we will focus on just a few of their many preoccupations. First unit: courtship, homoeroticism, gender definition; second unit: chivalric identity, honor, performance of identity; third unit: nation, race, and faith. Romances likely to be on the syllabus: Eneas, Tristan, Erec and Enide, Knight of the Cart, Romance of the Rose, Romance of the Horn, King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Floris and Blancheflor, Squire’s Tale, Morte Darthur.